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YAAKS // Bestival 2011 Preview

Intriguingly, Bestival’s organizers haven’t announced the set list times yet.

Ostensibly to allow for last-minute scheduling changes, cynics might point to the potential dent in sales of the official Bestival Apps that an A4 print-out would make.

Whatever. Who needs a schedule anyway? Wandering aimlessly at a festival as fun as Bestival is its chief pleasure.

Discovering bands by sound alone is a rare enough event as it is, and to do so where there’s a high chance that they will be good ones is simply to string one joy after another.

You may chance upon – for example – YAAKS, a band for whom either find spelling a frivolity or whom have chanced upon a cheerfully useful acronym.

Yaaks offset crystalline, precise rhythms and textures against equally precise, crystal-cut enunciation. Don’t even think of complaining. Pop music became a middle-class pursuit a long time ago.

Class issues brutishly hoiked aside, HrhRhthym [Tchoh! – does the ‘HRH’ stand for ‘Her Royal Highness’? – ANBAD Class War Ed.] is either polyrhythmic or so densely layered with carefully patterned beats and artfully tweaked noises that is just sounds like it is.

Precise, but obstreperous. You may not like them, but as many other people will love them. And that’s important.